Wednesday, July 21, 2010

About 8 a.m. a week ago, I’m watching NY1 TV and here comes a video segment on Faisal Shahzad, post full-confession, showing him in previous days with reputed Taliban members. He’s in native dress, a Kalashnikov on his hip, back to camera, as they climb a rocky slope in Pakistan, or was it a back lot at Paramount? Anything’s possible.

Then there is this video in an AP piece on NorthJersey.com, showing him reading verses from the Koran, and telling us how he will carry out a “‘revenge attack’ against the US to avenge the deaths of Muslims killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the US, and that he hopes his actions will touch the hearts of Muslims.” I’m thinking, Shahz, we heard you the first time, in the courtroom.

I mean this guy already pleaded guilty to carrying out the botched Times Square bombing, relinquished his Miranda rights, and was ready to do the time for the war effort, insisting no deals be cut. Yet all that had been lacking in the panoply of film and tape clips and photographs were shots of him with the Taliban and holding a machine gun and holding or reading from the Koran. Well, from my mouth to G-D’s ear, not that I have a direct line.

Video of Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad surfaces

But I had mentioned in at least two of my previous stories about him, Shahzad: American dream or nightmare bomber (where there’s an all-American-boy face smiling at you) and in ‘Manchurian Candidate’ Shahzad confesses all, that “Later that summer, Shahzad goes home to Pakistan with wife and kids. There, the US government claims, he joins a military training camp, yet I don’t see a picture of him in any military gear, glaring as he holds up a Kalashnikov (italics mine).

Regarding his all-inclusive confession I wrote, “It’s as if the DOJ or CIA had read either my or other writers’ articles about Shahzad and addressed all the issues in his confession.” And now, here he is on screen, in scenes snatched from a 40-minute video no less, like a rock star, airing on Dubai-based TV station Al-Arabiya News Channel, purportedly released by the Pakistani Taliban (and how about to American Idol?).

His recitations from the Koran are soft-spoken as he sits on the ground in a black turban, military fatigues, with a machine-gun next to him. Previously, he had mentioned he received all of five days’ training in explosives before returning to the US in February to pull off the bomb plot, and with funding from the militant group. Luckily, they forgot to tell him to use a blasting cap in his Pathfinder pastiche of a bomb.

What’s more, we’re told he received $5,000 in cash on February 25 from “an unnamed co-conspirator and another $7,000 on April 10, “sent at the c-c’s direction,” lunch money for some of our home-grown terrorists.

In this image provided by CBS Attorney General Eric Holder listens to a question from CBS News’ Bob Schieffer during a July 8, 2010, taped interview on “Face the Nation” in Aspen, Colo.

But man oh man, how are you supposed to believe this stuff? Including Attorney General Eric Holder, in video clips, patting himself and law enforcement on the back for catching this dangerous dude who could have inflicted all kinds of damage on those innocent people walking through Times Square, actually the south side of 45th Street west of 7th Avenue, parked in an illegal zone in the heart of Tin Pan Alley, where drama queens and kings are born, and somehow the cops didn’t ticket his car, with no driver in it, the motor running and lights on. But a Muslim Vietnam vet, selling T-shirts, saw smoke coming out of the SUV and called the cops.

I mean, give me a break guys. I understand you want all the fear of a terrorist sneaking among us but not the blowback of an actual 9/11-style massacre with all the agita that entails. So you come up with these little scenarios, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, and the Pathfinder bomber, but none of these bright lights have blasting caps, so their well-touted ops all fizzle out in smoke.

Yet, you (our protectors) keep feeding the fuel to the urban legends, caught in your own underwear time after time. Let it go already. What are you feeding this guy, safety for his family, as in you won’t drone-bomb the comfortable home of his father, a former, high-ranking Pakistani air force officer in Pashto. Also, you had to have this DVD in the can before he even did it. It would be awkward putting him in front of a film crew after he botched the bomb. I can hear the sniggering in the background.

Anyhow, whoever is writing this stuff needs a replacement. It’s tired; it’s old; it’s a waste of time and money. And it grabs all that space in the press and on TV that could be allotted to listening to Obama’s promises and BP’s lies, the banking reform bill that’s has made Wall Street even more free-wheeling than before, derivatives wilder than ever, no Glass-Steagall Act, no interstate bank prohibitions, etcetera. But there are more restrictions on the doctors many of you want to use, thanks to the healthcare “reform” bill, and so on. Bullshit talks and the truth walks, really slow these days. And by the way, our taxes are going up.

But I will be looking for the next episode in “The Adventures of Faisal Shahzad, Times Square Car Bomber.” In fact, we have to get him back on Broadway, either in a big musical, or some George Clooney-type Middle Eastern intrigue film. Clooney can play his handler now that George has joined the Council on Foreign Relations. He’ll learn all the ropes.

I mean, it is a strange world, children, so be careful and don’t get in other people’s cars if they stop and offer you candy. There are crazy people out there, nasty people. And look what they did to this poor patsy who came here in 1998 at 19 years of age, got himself a B.S. in computer science, and an MBA, and went to work for a financial firm, to support himself, his wife and soon to arrive two kids.

I guess we just can’t stop ragging on the rag-heads (sorry, Shaz). But somebody’s got to take the ongoing rap for the endless War on Terror. And I guess it’s you and yours, from Beirut to Kandahar to Pashtu to Timbuktu; you who have to eat the dirt of this “dumb war” as our president put it when he was a candidate and said he would stop it immediately. But he lied.

But then Gordon Duff, editor of Veterans Today, and a 100 percent disabled Marine Vietnam veteran, whose work’s been featured on TV and radio, including Al Jazeera, and whose articles have been carried by news services around the world . . . Gordon has this great new article America’s Tarnished Military Partnership With Israel, sub-headed Our Unreported “Cold War With Israel.” It’ll make the hair stand up on the back of your neck if you read it. And it might get you thinking about who was really responsible for 9/11 and the havoc that ensued.

Here’s a sample. Consider it food for thought: “With the dozens of conspiracy theories and a weak and implausible cover story, one the 9/11 Commission itself eventually rejected, only one plausible answer was left, an answer very much ‘not for public consumption.’ Few Americans know that a team of Israeli intelligence agents were arrested on 9/11 after being observed using ‘video’ equipment to record the planes crashing into the towers. After the disaster, the Mossad agents, soon to be arrested and released by the FBI, began celebrating as though they had completed a successful operation. This enraged New Yorkers who mistook them for terrorists. In fact, New Yorkers weren’t wrong.

“Only top members of America’s military knew the truth, the ‘dancing Israelis’ had remotely guided the two planes into the World Trade Center, not simply videoing, itself proof of guilt. Military pilots, in particular, knew the planes were nearly impossible to maneuver at those speeds without Israeli designed auto-pilot systems, not unlike those used on Tomahawk/Cruise missiles. Behind a flurry of ‘conspiracy theories,’ many totally implausible, some obvious to military leaders as part of an elaborate deception plan requiring widespread control of media assets, more subtext came to light.”

So, do yourself a favor. Check out Duff. He’s a guy that’s been there and back. And let’s hope Shahzad wakes up one these days from whatever he’s on. Given the way things work, I’m sure he’s playing this game to keep his family alive. Somewhere on the road of life, he got in the wrong car.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer and life-long resident of New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.